He knew Germany well and
had a good many friends in Berlin.
W. of course had a great many men's dinners, from which I was excluded.
I dined often with some of my friends, not of the official world, and I
used to ask myself sometimes if the Quai d'Orsay and these houses could
be in the same country. It was an entirely different world, every point
of view different, not only politics--that one would expect, as the
whole of society was anti-Republican, Royalist, or Bonapartist--but
every question discussed wore a different aspect. Once or twice there
was a question of Louis XIV and what he would have done in certain
cases,--the religious question always a passionate one. That of course I
never discussed, being a Protestant, and knowing quite well that the
real fervent Catholics think Protestants have no religion.
I was out driving with a friend one morning in Lent (Holy Week),
Thursday I think--and said I could not be out late, as I must go to
church--perhaps she would drop me at the Protestant Chapel in the Avenue
de la Grand Armee. She was so absolutely astonished that it was almost
funny, though I was half angry too.
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